Managing organic waste (alternately called garbage, refuse, trash etc.) is an important issue for households, industries and municipalities. Various methods or devices are in common use today to divert organic waste from landfills, but fail to provide fully satisfactory solutions. The most prevalent diversion methods or devices include under-sink waste disposers, garbage compacters, home composting, and municipal collection and composting. These methods or devices will be described below.
Under-sink waste disposers are mounted below the basket of a conventional sink. Disposers are located in line between the sink basket and the sink drain line and provide means for chopping garbage into particles which can be washed down the drain line. A user inserts garbage through the sink basket, turns on the tap to provide a stream of water sufficient to wash down the garbage, and turns on the chopping means. Disposers are attractive to consumers because they provide an immediate and permanent means to remove garbage from the sink area. But while disposers are convenient for the user, they harm the environment. In particular, they use excessive amounts of water as required to entrain the garbage in a flow of liquid down the drain. And although the garbage is removed from the kitchen, it is merely transplanted to whatever sewage system services the house. The transplanted garbage is a burden on the sewage system and on the environment since all sewage treatment systems produce some form of discharge roughly in proportion to the amount of waste that they treat. Further, the potential value of the organic waste is lost. For these reasons, under-sink disposers have been banned in some jurisdictions. Under sink disposers are also not attractive to consumers that are environmentally conscious, consumers that pay for utilities based on the amount of water they use or sewage they produce, or consumers that use septic tanks or other private sewage treatment devices.
Garbage compacters basically crush all garbage put into them, and place the crushed garbage into a strong plastic bag. The volume of the garbage is reduced, but the total mass of garbage remains unchanged. The user gets some benefit from having a smaller volume of garbage to store or handle, but the weight and smell of the garbage remain and there are virtually no benefits to the municipality since the compacted garbage is mixed with general garbage that the municipality would crush at some point in any event. The potential value of the organic waste is again lost.
Because of the problems with trash disposers and compacters, environmentally conscious consumers and municipalities have promoted home composting. Home composting diverts some organic waste from landfills or waste treatment facilities and produces a potentially useful product from it. But consumers have only been partially receptive to home composting because it is essentially inconvenient. In home composting, homeowners maintain a composting bin or other receptacle in their own yard. The occupants of the household typically collect selected organic waste in a pail and empty the pail into the composting bin daily. Over time, the selected organic waste will turn into compost that can be used at the household, for example, as fertilizer for gardens. The garbage remains in the home until emptied to the compost bin, and must be taken to the compost bin periodically. Taking waste to the compost bin is often a nuisance since the compost bin is outdoors and, for aesthetic reasons, usually located as far from the house as possible. The compost bin also takes up space in the yard. For these reasons, a large portion of the population simply will not practice home composting and a large portion of those that do will only practice it sporadically. On a municipal level, the major problem with home composting is that it only works well if the user has a sizable yard. Businesses and people living in apartments and condominiums, or even townhouses with small yards, have no place for a composting bin and no use for the volume of compost they would create. Other problems relate to the slow speed of home composting and concerns for attracting pests. These problems generally prevent meat, dairy products and other organics from being home composted.
Municipal collection and composting has been proposed as a means to improve on home composting. In a typical application, a municipality provides its residents with a special container for organic waste. The homeowners collect organic waste in the special container over the course of a week, and then place the container at the curb for pick up. The municipality collects the organic waste and can process it at dedicated composting sites. A municipal composting site typically breaks down the waste faster than a home composting bin and may generate a steady supply of compost in sufficient volume to support a compost sales unit. A municipal site may also be able to extract usable biomass or gases for energy production. Of course these programs involve the cost of the special containers and the cost of picking up and transporting raw organic waste. The more significant problem, however, is that these programs remain inconvenient to the users. In particular, the special container is typically kept in a garage because it must be large enough to hold a week's worth of raw organic waste and because it smells by the time that the pick up day arrives. The user must either travel regularly to the garage to deposit organic waste or maintain interim collections of organic waste in the house. As with home composting, even users that support the environmental goals of a municipal composting program may only separate some of their organic waste for composting. Municipal composting programs are also similar to home composting in that they are generally not useful for people living in apartments or condominiums since the special container must be kept within the living area of each unit where it takes up space, looks ugly and smells.
Because of these and other problems, consumers and other users remain frustrated by the entire waste management and recycling process.